Thoughts from a talk on pagan chaplaincy
I don't know that chaplaincy is the right place for me, but I just attended a presentation on the subject by Patrick McCollum, and it got me thinking about some things. Like how I really want to get back to school for a degree in religion. Engineering is enjoyable, and it pays well, but it's not where my heart is. I don't know how I'm going to give up the paycheck, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to eventually.
Anyway, that's just a tangent. The real thing it got me thinking about is that I need a lesson in humility sometime. I know: to anyone who's know me for a few years, that one's been obvious for a while now. And people who've known me for the last couple of those have surely noticed a change in that direction, but from my perspective it's been a surface one. I've been learning to deal with people who are wrong, not really deeply respecting their stance except perhaps as something roughly equivalent to my own, but through some filter.
I was sorta primed for my realization a few weeks back in a conversation with a friend. She and I babble off and on. Mostly small talk, but then occasionally it gets into some crazy-deep philosophical talk. And I love those talks because she can take ideas that coming from anyone else would be complete newage crap nonsense bullshit, and she has the introspection to understand it, process it, and then defend it with the analytical precision and robustness that my standard arguing tack needs in order to respect it, all the while keeping the discussion tone one of cooperative conversation instead of argument. I don't honestly know more than that one person who can do that well.
Anyway, so a few weeks ago she and I had a conversation about masks and about seeing things from a variety of perspectives. It's standard operating procedure for her to mold her perspective to what's most useful in the situation. Not abandoning herself at all, mind you, but changing and reframing on the fly around her core personality. For me, though, I learned early as a psychological defense mechanism to define my own perspective well and hold fast to it, strongly rejecting external attempts to change it. Problem is, I never really quite got it right. I don't do that well: at some level I'm just too damned good at empathizing with people, so I try to be all firm -- I even put on a good show at it -- but I still end up pretty wishy-washy on a lot of things.
Fast-forward to today. Patrick is talking about the things that are important in chaplaincy, and he makes the point that the whole goal of chaplaincy is to support people in their beliefs (or the healthy ones at least), even if that means telling them that yes Jesus loves them even though I don't believe in Jesus as the son of any god I worship. That struck a chord within me in a way that I can't really explain. See, the way I would habitually approach a question of Jesus' love would be to help the person reframe the question in my model and answer it there, which completely misses the point of the question and honestly goes over the heads of 99% of the people who might ask the it. This is not in any way helpful: it's at best useless and more often downright arrogant. And honestly, I don't like it about myself. I'm starting to recognize it as a self-taught knee-jerk reaction, and it makes me uncomfortable to consider the possibility that I might not really have control over it. I need to be able to recognize when that response is appropriate (i.e., rarely) and when something else would be more useful (i.e., almost always), and I need to develop some facility with that something else. I have a strong suspicion I'll be a lot more comfortable in that mode once all of my pretenses and self-defenses are stripped away.
Anyway, there's a bunch more in all of that, but to explore it fully I'd need either a diagram or a few chapters, and right now I just don't want to put the time into it. I'm not sure I'd have the skills to. Another reason to go back to school.
Off to drum. My head resolves its problems best when I let them percolate.
(LJ Spellchecker Genius of the Day: reframe -> referee)
Anyway, that's just a tangent. The real thing it got me thinking about is that I need a lesson in humility sometime. I know: to anyone who's know me for a few years, that one's been obvious for a while now. And people who've known me for the last couple of those have surely noticed a change in that direction, but from my perspective it's been a surface one. I've been learning to deal with people who are wrong, not really deeply respecting their stance except perhaps as something roughly equivalent to my own, but through some filter.
I was sorta primed for my realization a few weeks back in a conversation with a friend. She and I babble off and on. Mostly small talk, but then occasionally it gets into some crazy-deep philosophical talk. And I love those talks because she can take ideas that coming from anyone else would be complete newage crap nonsense bullshit, and she has the introspection to understand it, process it, and then defend it with the analytical precision and robustness that my standard arguing tack needs in order to respect it, all the while keeping the discussion tone one of cooperative conversation instead of argument. I don't honestly know more than that one person who can do that well.
Anyway, so a few weeks ago she and I had a conversation about masks and about seeing things from a variety of perspectives. It's standard operating procedure for her to mold her perspective to what's most useful in the situation. Not abandoning herself at all, mind you, but changing and reframing on the fly around her core personality. For me, though, I learned early as a psychological defense mechanism to define my own perspective well and hold fast to it, strongly rejecting external attempts to change it. Problem is, I never really quite got it right. I don't do that well: at some level I'm just too damned good at empathizing with people, so I try to be all firm -- I even put on a good show at it -- but I still end up pretty wishy-washy on a lot of things.
Fast-forward to today. Patrick is talking about the things that are important in chaplaincy, and he makes the point that the whole goal of chaplaincy is to support people in their beliefs (or the healthy ones at least), even if that means telling them that yes Jesus loves them even though I don't believe in Jesus as the son of any god I worship. That struck a chord within me in a way that I can't really explain. See, the way I would habitually approach a question of Jesus' love would be to help the person reframe the question in my model and answer it there, which completely misses the point of the question and honestly goes over the heads of 99% of the people who might ask the it. This is not in any way helpful: it's at best useless and more often downright arrogant. And honestly, I don't like it about myself. I'm starting to recognize it as a self-taught knee-jerk reaction, and it makes me uncomfortable to consider the possibility that I might not really have control over it. I need to be able to recognize when that response is appropriate (i.e., rarely) and when something else would be more useful (i.e., almost always), and I need to develop some facility with that something else. I have a strong suspicion I'll be a lot more comfortable in that mode once all of my pretenses and self-defenses are stripped away.
Anyway, there's a bunch more in all of that, but to explore it fully I'd need either a diagram or a few chapters, and right now I just don't want to put the time into it. I'm not sure I'd have the skills to. Another reason to go back to school.
Off to drum. My head resolves its problems best when I let them percolate.
(LJ Spellchecker Genius of the Day: reframe -> referee)